


Fostered

by rageprufrock



Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-24
Updated: 2009-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obviously, it was not just any sort of egg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fostered

Merlin wasn’t terrifically inclined to speak with the dragon after he’d revealed himself for the tosser he was, and so it took nearly two days of its nonstop roaring before Merlin’s headache finally became unbearable and he stomped down into the dungeons.

“_What the hell is the matter with you?_” he shouted preemptively, into the massive, shuddering dark of the underground cavern, his voice promptly swallowed up by the long echo of the dragon’s scream of rage.

There wasn’t any answer at first, and the sound bouncing off of the walls died slowly and in pieces, until all that remained was silence—and then, the sudden, leathery indication of wings parting the air just overhead.  

Merlin had just enough time to crane his head and ask, “What on—?” before he was promptly knocked unconscious by something enormous and heavy and enormously heavy, which fell on him from a great height and at a prejudiced speed.  
      
***

He woke later, when the orange-gold late-afternoon sun was painting slats across the foot of his bed, with a deeply irritated Arthur Pendragon hovering over him.

“That stupid dragon of your father’s nearly _killed me_,” Merlin tried to say, which came out more or less like, “Nrgh.”

Arthur, heartless, said only, “You are truly the _worst manservant in the world._”

Merlin had long-ago learned that arguing the point was a profitless endeavor.  Arthur’s idea of a passable manservant involved a great deal of allowing him to bully Camelot’s uglier peasants and tormenting visiting noblewomen and lordlings harboring harmless if useless crushes, so Merlin had concluded that being pants at being Arthur’s manservant was actually a high recommendation.

It was only then that Merlin recalled where he’d been when the dragon had launched its unprovoked attack and shot up in bed — immediately regretting it as pain lanced down his back — and then suddenly Arthur’s voice was warm in his ear, his hands shockingly soft, easing Merlin back down on the narrow bed as he said, “Stop being such an idiot, Merlin, honestly.”

Merlin blinked back the reflexive wetness in his eyes, tried to catch Arthur’s distracted gaze and figure out why the prince had pinked, just then.  “What happened to me?”

Cocking a brow at him, Arthur said, “You don’t remember?”

It wasn’t truly a lie, either! Merlin rejoiced.  “No!” he cheered.

After a long minute of looking at Merlin as if he were somewhat unfortunate in the head, Arthur cleared his throat and said, “Well, the dragon attacked you.”

Widening his eyes as much as possible, Merlin gushed, “There is a _dragon?_  In _Camelot?_” to which Arthur just rolled his blue eyes and said, “You know, it is actually insulting how dim you and my father seem to think I am, in mutually exclusive ways, even,” before he turned round to shuffle for something on the floor by Merlin’s bed.

“Anyway,” Arthur said, righting himself again, arms wrapped around — around an _egg_ the size of a small boulder, “it apparently threw this at you.”

“Oh,” Merlin promised, knee-jerk, “I will have that thing _skinned for boots_.”

***

Obviously, it was not just any sort of egg.

It was rose-colored, underneath a thick layer of dust, and when Merlin put his palm on it, the egg was warm to the touch, and seemed alive beneath his hand.  The shell, Arthur said, was unbreakable, and then he’d given Merlin a long list of objects in the room that either required replacing (from being shattered) or sharpening.

“You tried to _break it?_” Merlin demanded, horrified, and Arthur had only blinked at him, guileless and unashamed and said, “What else was I supposed to do with it?” which had led Merlin into one of those existential fits during which he required Gwen’s council to convince him that helping Arthur to become the future ruler of all of Albion wasn’t a totally stupid idea after all.

After some argument about whether or not they should keep the egg, Arthur ignored their decision to cast it into the deepest parts of the forest in favor of installing it in his own quarters, secreted away behind a screen and near enough to the always-roaring fire to keep it warm.  It was nestled on a pile of his oldest, softest clothes, bound for the scrap heap, and Merlin spent a good part of the evening stroking it in curious observation while Arthur was off battering and assaulting the latest noblemen foolish enough to vie for knighthood under the prince’s reign of terror.

“This is what happens when you grow up without a maternal influence, you know,” Merlin told the egg sadly.  “You become Arthur.  You take dragon eggs that knock your manservant unconscious and start projecting all of your repressed female feelings on them and keep them hidden in your chambers even though your father has a tyrannical ban against all magic.”

The egg was very still and static in response.  

Merlin hauled himself to his feet, chastising himself for talking to the damn thing and heading toward the woodpile to refresh Arthur’s supply for the long night.

During the darkest, most brutal parts of winter, Gaius burned herbed fires all night long to ward away evil spirits and ill humors, and Merlin smelled like smoke and sorrel so often and so intensely Arthur had finally just bade him stay in Arthur’s own chambers at night.  Merlin hadn’t even bothered with a token protest, since the trio of heavy blankets he slept beneath in front of Arthur’s fireplace were far warmer than his tiny bed, and it felt, stupidly, nice to be near Arthur, even if it was just to hear him as restless in sleep as he was awake.

When Merlin returned with more wood and a thin frosting of snow, it was to see Arthur, still in his armor, gleaming in the orange light of the flames, sitting cross-legged on the rushes running one rough finger down the curve of the egg.  Merlin didn’t bother to smother the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth, just set the wood down and went over to the prince, gently pulling at the freezing metal of his armor until it was just Arthur, his golden hair gleaming in the firelight and the soft, worn red of his shirt.

“What kind of egg do you think it is?” he asked, quiet.

Merlin curled up on the floor, leaning heavily against Arthur’s side and ignoring Arthur’s quiet _tsk_ of irritation at the sudden chill.  Arthur might complain loud and long about Merlin’s icy fingers and freezing toes, but he never moved away when they sat like this, huddled quiet and unobserved together on long, dark winter nights.

“I guess it’s a dragon egg,” Merlin said.

Arthur made a face.  “Does that mean the dragon under the castle is female?”

“Well, it is a bitch,” Merlin muttered, and Arthur laughed, brushing his hand over the egg once more.

Merlin sighed, suddenly exhausted, and leaned his head on Arthur’s shoulder, turning his face into the warm cotton of his tunic and the reassuring broadness of his chest.  Arthur smelled like wintergreen and sweat and like the herbs Merlin put in the washwater for his clothes.  Sometimes — especially on blinding winter mornings, when all the snow washed Camelot’s grays and browns to nothingness — Merlin found it impossible to reconcile Arthur and how human and warm and alive he was with the promise of his kingship.  And other times, Merlin thought, smiling into Arthur’s shoulder, it didn’t matter.

Arthur mapped a hand along the back of Merlin’s head, fingers warm and measuring, and asked, “Is your head still hurting you?”

It was only a dull ache, now, but Merlin just made a wordless murmur and leaned into the touch until Arthur sighed, equal parts resigned and affectionate, and scolded, “You are so _spoiled_.”

Merlin ended up tucked up in Arthur’s bed that night, Arthur’s arm casual and possessing over his chest, his big hand splayed out over Merlin’s chest, hot through the thin fabric of his shirt.  Merlin had hated winters in Ealdor where he’d seen children freeze and too many fall ill and die, but in Camelot, winter meant huddled evenings like this, soft and private with Arthur, and Merlin couldn’t help but think, _And who do you think is spoiling me, anyway?_

***

The next morning there was two feet of snow on the ground.

Despite Merlin’s best efforts and a somewhat coercive maneuver that had involved him pouting extensively at Arthur and tugging on the sleeve of his tunic while still tangled up in the bed — and Merlin tried very hard not to think about why that had nearly worked — Arthur had gathered up the knights for patrols in the blistering cold wind.  

For reasons Merlin wasn’t entirely clear on, the knights and their various pages and underlings had taken to giving him foul looks when Arthur couldn’t be persuaded to act like a normal human person and have a lie-in during inclement weather.  As such, Merlin ran all the out-of-chambers errands as quickly as possible while Arthur and his guard were staggering around in the snowdrifts and retreated back inside the prince’s rooms before any wayward servants could trap him with particularly bitter looks.

Merlin made up the bed and swept the fireplace, cleared the dust away and turned the egg, so the far side had its turn directly toward the flames now.  He broke the ice in the washing basin and scrubbed down the length of the wooden table and crushed down the tapestries on the wall, and then he sat in Arthur’s chair with a book he’d borrowed from Morgana and magicked the floors clean.   

“Did you turn the egg?” Arthur asked, bursting into his chambers and bringing a gust of cold, sweet air.  He was red-faced and crusted with mud and snow, which of course was now tracking all over the newly-washed floors.

Merlin made a face at him and dove for his armor.  “I just cleaned those floors.”

Arthur ignored him in favor of peering over his shoulder at the egg.  “Do you think it looks bigger today than last night?”

Rolling his eyes, Merlin set away Arthur’s sword and dagger and hauberk, reaching for his braces, he said, “I think it should have been cast into the forest.”

“Where it could hatch and terrorize the countryside?” Arthur scoffed.  “Better this way.”

“Right, so it can kill the heir to the throne and his manservant and everybody else in the castle first,” Merlin replied cheerfully, and helped Arthur step out from underneath the iron and bitter-cold cascade of his chainmail — heavier still from the tiny blocks of ice that had formed in its links — and spread it out before the fire to dry before it rusted.

“I think it’s bigger today,” Arthur decided, ducking away from Merlin’s hands and the linen rag he was trying to use to dry all the snow out of Arthur’s hair and running to the egg to study it more closely.

Merlin threw the rag at him.  “Eggs don’t _get_ bigger, you prat.”

“This is a _dragon’s egg_, Merlin, not quite your average laying from a hen,” Arthur lectured, balling up the rag and throwing it back.  “Is there anything to eat?  I’m ravenous.”

So Merlin fed him cheese and rabbit and pieces of toast fresh from the fire, and casually passed over a flagon containing the last of that summer’s honeyed ale, carefully hidden from the castle cooks, stableboys, knights, and various other drunken castmembers — the trouble of doing so made worth it when Arthur’s eyes gleamed in delight.  

Then Merlin made the grave error of asking, “How was patrol?” for which he was punished by having to endure Arthur’s answer, which included an agonizing overview of the state of the lower village’s supply of hops and unfouled grains, at which point Merlin was actually desperate enough to start up the conversation about the egg again to avoid any further discussion of how to ease grain tithes in order to suffer through the long winter.

“ — and anyway, it may be difficult to sway the council to my side on this subject but I feel very strongly about — ”

“How long do you think it takes a dragon’s egg to hatch?” Merlin interrupted, desperate, and he could see the moment Arthur’s train of thought went from ‘wheat’ to ‘egg!’  Merlin had never met anybody who needed a pet more than Arthur.

“Well, obviously it would be a longer period than a chicken’s,” Arthur said confidently before turning over his shoulder toward the egg, still toasting in front of the fireplace.  “Although that brings an even more pressing question of what we’ll do after it hatches.”

Scowling, Merlin said, “I told you we should have cast it into the forest.”

But Arthur only flashed him one of those smiles that made him look eternally young and brilliant, and which had probably charmed all the lady maids in the castle for all of his prattish childhood years.  “Where’s your sense of adventure, Merlin?”

Merlin thought it had nearly died along with everybody else that horrible week, when Arthur was struck by the Questing Beast and then his mother had nearly perished in his tiny bed in Camelot and then Gaius had gone in a flight of huge-heartedness.  He would settle for a small and quiet destiny, if it meant he never again had to rest Arthur’s fever-damp head in his lap, stroke his hair back from his face and pray to the old gods that Camelot didn’t lose its heir, that Merlin didn’t lose his prince.  

“I just want everybody to be safe,” Merlin admitted.

Then Arthur’s hand, suddenly, was warm and on his chin, Arthur’s thumb a reassuring weight at the corner of Merlin’s mouth.

“Of course, Merlin,” Arthur said, solemn.

Merlin could see the king Arthur would be one day in that moment, basked in his reassurance, and he felt suddenly shy, ducking his head to stare at his fingers, laced together in his lap.

***

By Midwinter, the entire court had gone slightly mad from boredom, which meant of course there was a great deal of furtive tumbling in corners, stacks of hay, convenient dark corners of the great hall during the more raucously drunk feasts, and also, it seemed, absolutely everywhere Merlin tried to go during the day.  He kept stumbling upon furtive and unattractive couplings and no matter how much goose fat and winterberry salve he put on his eyelids he couldn’t seem to banish the horrid images.

“This is unbearable,” Merlin moaned one day, escaping finally into Arthur’s quarters and out of the freezing hallways where he’d nearly tripped over a pair of kitchen boys rutting enthusiastically behind a stack of rushes.

Arthur, who had apparently gotten bored enough to take up whittling, glanced up from the tiny and rather intricate unicorn he was fashioning out of a piece of smooth, unknotted pine.  

“What, the boredom?” he asked.

“No, the bloody _shagging_,” Merlin wailed.

Arthur dropped his knife and the unicorn, shouting, “_What?_”

“Everywhere I go,” Merlin complained, dropping a stack of freshly-laundered linen on Arthur’s bed and stripping away the old coverings viciously.  “Everything I do — _shagging_.  I go to the woodpile — _shagging_.  I go to the laundry — _shagging_.  I go to the storerooms — _absolutely shocking amounts of shagging._  It is as if all of Camelot refrained from having sex all year long and then saved it so they could go mad with it in bloody Midwinter and I — ”

Recovering himself, Arthur said, “It is winter, Merlin, the people are bored.”

“It is harming my sanity!” Merlin shouted, casting all of Arthur’s blankets angrily on the ground.  “If I see one more naked, winter-white pimply arse enthusiastically humping one more of the castle laundresses I’ll go mad and burn down the armory.”

“Please, Merlin,” Arthur said, eminently reasonable, “it’s not exactly harming anybody — let people have their fun.”

A day and a half later, after Arthur came across a particularly winter-white and pimply-arsed young stablehand trying to woo Merlin with a gap-toothed smile, his opinion about the whole business seemed much-revised.

“I’m flattered, really,” Merlin lied.  “But I’m saving myself.”

“Fo’ whot?” Edgar asked, leaning closer and putting a hand next to Merlin’s face against the stable wall.  “Anyway, I think you’ve got a pretty mouf.”

“That is…actually the most horrible thing anybody’s ever said to me,” Merlin was forced to admit, but thankfully he was prevented from having to either attempt to fight Edgar — who was built like an inbred boar — or suffer any of his further advances when Arthur appeared and had Edgar thrown in the stocks for the day.

“That was appalling!” Arthur roared.  “I cannot believe any subject of Camelot would behave in such an utterly boorish manner!”

Merlin, still watching the villagers gleefully pelt Edgar with pieces of hard squashes, pumpkins, and larger-than-usual chunks of rotting potato — which Merlin suspected Arthur had given to them — teased, “I thought you said it was all in good fun.”

Arthur turned as brightly red as holly berries, and Merlin suspected it wasn’t from the cold at all, and he couldn’t help but to feel an answering blush in his own cheeks.

“It is neither good nor fun when someone makes unacceptable advances toward the prince’s personal staff,” Arthur sniffed, and started hauling Merlin back to his chambers by the scruff of his neck.  “Come on now, I think the egg requires turning.”

***

The egg didn’t, really, but Merlin was quick to forgive Arthur for it when, after they reached his chambers, Arthur pinned him to the wall and looked and looked and looked at Merlin until he finally said, “You do.  Have a beautiful mouth,” and kissed him, and Merlin thought that coming from Arthur, it was not a horrible compliment at all.

***

After that, Arthur whittled fewer unicorns but Merlin spent just as much time changing the sheets, and they both turned the egg.  

By Arthur’s calculations, they’d now been harboring the damn thing for two months now, which he regretted mentioning because it had led to a truly regrettable trip Arthur insisted on taking to visit with some local farmers to ask about the reproductive cycles of chickens.  Naturally, they ended up talking about wheat taxes instead, and Merlin fantasized about killing himself violently in the snow to make a point.

“You could at least pretend to be interested in this,” Arthur sighed when they finally made it back to his chambers and Merlin was helping him out of his cloak, brushing the snow out of Arthur’s hair.

“And why should I?” Merlin asked, tart, laying the cloak to dry across Arthur’s chair.

Arthur only sighed, long-suffering.  “One day, they may come to you asking for help, and God knows your disinterest is no excuse for their misfortune,” he lectured.

There had been a series of increasingly pretty noblemen’s daughters arriving at the gates of Camelot of late.  Merlin had spent a number of hours writing to Morgana and Gwen, elaborating on how he hated the girls, and defaming their characters in general, and so it was on his mind and not really his fault when he said:

“And why will they ask me?  It’s not as if I’ll ever hold court as your queen.”

“No,” Arthur agreed, smiling, and reaching up to cup Merlin’s chin, said, “I would rather you be my most trusted advisor.”

Merlin felt his mouth open a little, and out fell a whisper of, “_Arthur_,” but then Arthur was covering up Merlin’s mouth with his own and whatever else he wanted to say felt very far away.

And that was when the egg hatched.

***

The dragon — it was a _dragon_ — was very small and had tiny, silvery-purple skin and scales, and its body felt like that of a snake’s underneath Merlin’s hands, soft and shockingly alive, vulnerable.  It had tiny, angular wings that didn’t quite work yet and the hugest, most pleading blue eyes Merlin had ever seen in his life.

“Obviously, she needs a name,” Arthur decided, staring with open, unvarnished love down at the dragon, cuddled in his arms.  Merlin recognized the look on the dragon’s face, and it wasn’t a mirror of Arthur’s affection.

“She?” he asked, edging closer.  “Also, Arthur, maybe you should let it go.”

“She’s purple-pink, obviously it’s a girl,” Arthur said, holding the dragon more tightly.  “And no, no, she’s just a baby — she couldn’t possibly harm any — ”

Several hours later, after Merlin had first put out the small fire the dragon had set to Arthur’s fringe and then been forced to reveal himself as a wizard when Arthur demanded he repair the damage and then been forced to reveal himself as a slightly hapless wizard when it took three tries, Arthur still appeared not to have learned his lesson.

“You knew?” Merlin asked, gathering the dragon up into his arms to keep her from making another go of setting the heir to Camelot on fire.  “You knew, all this time?”

Arthur kept pawing at his hair, checking it over and over again.  

“Of course I knew,” he sighed.  “You’re an appallingly crap liar, you know, Merlin.”

Merlin considered for a moment the potential consequences of letting the dragon go and allowing her to set all of Arthur on fire as opposed to just his fringe, but there was always the potential he might grow to regret it later.

“Look, anyway,” Merlin said, since it didn’t seem like Arthur was planning on having him killed for practicing sorcery, “the point is, I’m not sure we should keep it.”

Arthur looked, for a moment, stricken before he schooled his face into an expression of irritated all-knowing command.  “Obviously we’ll keep her,” he said.  “What else would we do with her?”

When Merlin said, “Expose it in the forest?” he was mostly joking, but he didn’t get an opportunity to explain that to Arthur, who snatched the dragon out of Merlin’s arms, shoved him out of the room, and locked his chamber doors.

***

It was guilt, finally, that drove Merlin back to the dragon’s lair deep beneath the castle.  He thought of what his mother would do, if there was no way for him to send her letters or word of his good health back to Ealdor, and lit a torch and forced himself to visit the beast, still half-buried under the paving stones of Camelot.  

“I had wondered when you would show your face again, Young Warlock,” it told him, gold eyes all-knowing and amused when Merlin alighted the rock outcropping.  

“Your child is born,” Merlin said, and tried not to remember the look of his mother, how she’d gone pale and sick and nearly dead.  Or how the dragon wished for Uther’s death, how it had tried to rush the destiny it was so insistent of.  “She seems healthy.  Or Arthur thinks so, anyway.”

“She is,” the dragon told him.  “And it is not my child, Warlock — just one I rescued from Uther’s terrors.”

Merlin blinked in surprise.  “You have been hiding it for twenty years?”

“I could have hidden her for much longer,” the dragon informed him, idly admiring its own claws.  Merlin wondered when he’d lost his awe of the creature, when he’d found his words instead of just staring.  “But she said it was her time to be born — perhaps she has seen the destiny, too.”

Groaning, Merlin said, “Not this again.”

“You may fight it all you like, Merlin,” the dragon warned, “but your time comes fast.”

Merlin had learned mostly to ignore the dragon, and had come to the conclusion the destiny, if it could be hasted and manipulated, was no more destined than anything else that happened.  Maybe destiny was just an option, one particular path through a lifetime of events, so although he didn’t particularly _believe_ the dragon any longer, it didn’t keep him from crawling into Arthur’s bed that night, unbidden.  

“This is new,” Arthur told him, voice hoarse, his eyes blue slits in the dark as Merlin shimmied underneath Arthur’s heavy, warm arm, slipped his leg in between Arthur’s thighs, slotted them together and pressed close to Arthur’s chest.

“Nothing can happen to you, Arthur,” Merlin told him, serious.  If destiny was coming on swift wings, then Merlin would be ready.  There were other words, trapped underneath his tongue, but he didn’t know how to say them, exactly, although shyness had never been one of his failings.

But Arthur must have heard them in the silence, because he sighed, pulling Merlin more tightly against his body, and whispered, “Go to sleep, Merlin.  Everything will be fine.”

Merlin had never been predisposed to knowing the future — after all, that had been Morgana’s gift, and he tried not to think of her, now.  Uther had married her off to a distant king despite Arthur’s protests and Gwen’s tears as she’d gone, too, ever faithful to her lady — but he thought, then, he could see five years, ten years into the future.  He could see Camelot, thriving, her people happy, rich harvests and drenching rains, deep snowdrifts in winter and lush springs, and Arthur, overseeing all of it, Merlin at his side.

And Merlin, drowsing in Arthur’s arms, listening to the dragon’s tiny, huffing breaths from across the room, believed it — all of it.

***

Over the next year, Arthur’s bedroom required near-constant (magical) repair to disguise the fact that he was harboring a dragon with a terrible personality.  

The dragon — Arthur had named it _Carys_, of all bedamned things, especially since the bloody thing was _mean_ — was fond of setting Arthur’s curtains on fire, Arthur’s furniture on fire, his bed on fire, most preferably when Arthur and Merlin were in it entertaining themselves.

“That thing has got to go,” Merlin had stormed, when at eight months old Carys had nearly burned off his arse.  

Ignoring him, Arthur said, “Carys, that is not how we attract attention if we feel it is needed,” and fed her a rat.  

At nine months, Carys killed an assassin that slipped into Arthur’s quarters undetected on a night Merlin was helping Gaius manage the fevers of a dozen sick, and so Merlin decided to forgive her for being overall exactly like her mother.  At ten months old, Arthur and Merlin took long hunting trips, smuggling Carys out of the castle to let her hunt in the deepest, wildest parts of the forest, and Merlin shocked himself at his own worry, how he’d fretted, watching her small, weak wings fluttering as she tried to fly, to catch things bigger than she was.

On one particular trip to celebrate her first year, Carys set her sights on a stag roughly the size of Albion itself, and Arthur more or less tackled Merlin to prevent him from using sorcery to prevent any sort of bloodshed.

“That stupid stag is twenty times her size!” Merlin hissed in protest.

Arthur rolled his eyes.  “If she doesn’t learn to hunt, she’ll never be able to feed herself.”

“There are plenty of things we can feed her,” Merlin argued.

“We can’t keep her forever, Merlin,” Arthur said matter-of-factly.  “One day, she’ll hit a growth spurt and she won’t fit in my chambers anymore — and what would we feed her?”

“Your horse,” Merlin said stubbornly.  “Your horse hates me.”

“He does not,” Arthur said, but sounded unconvinced, and he held Merlin’s hands tight and fast where they huddled behind a felled tree, watching Carys dart round the stag’s antlers, part play part poor form.

The stag won, and Arthur was silent and tight-lipped during their return to Camelot, Carys making pained chirping noises curled up in Merlin’s lap while Arthur led the horses by foot.  It took three weeks for the delicate tissues of her wings to mend, and ever after there was a long, ugly scar, the color slightly lighter than the surrounding skin, and whenever she fluttered about Merlin’s head as he went about his chores in Arthur’s chambers, Merlin felt a pang when he saw it — long after she stopped sulking and whimpering over the injury.

Merlin worried — endlessly — about what would happen when Carys grew too large to be secreted in Arthur’s apartments.  She was already knee-height, whiskers the length of his longest fingers, and her claws skittered on the stone floors and caught on the rugs when she chased Arthur around the room as he went about his business — half in flight, half running after him.

Her favorite activity continued to be roughhousing with Arthur, who instead of rational, human fear, seemed to love it.  Merlin sometimes despaired that one day, Arthur would be the once and future king, and that if it was &lt;i&gt;Arthur&lt;/i&gt; that would reunite all the lands of Albion, then by God, what tragic fools had come before him?  

“I hope you know there’s a rumor at court that you’re having deviant carnal relations with a widow,” Merlin said one day, dropping Arthur’s evening meal on the table.  “It seems like everybody’s finally noticed all the bruises and scratches.”

Carys snapped at his wrist, and Merlin smacked her nose in reproach with a spoon, which earned him a slap to the arse in reproach from Arthur, who said, “_Merlin_,” in warning and seemed happy to let Carys gnaw on the sleeve of his leather duster.

“You’re spoiling her,” Merlin warned.  

“Am not,” Arthur answered, voice light.  “And I thought you didn’t listen to gossip.”

As a rule, Merlin tried not to.  Castle intrigue had seemed so much more fascinating years ago before he’d realized glumly Camelot had a running debate over who was sampling his favors, Arthur or Uther.  He hadn’t been able to lift his head before the king for months.

“I do when it’s about you,” Merlin said.  

Most of Camelot loved Arthur, saw in him the promise stolen by Uther’s decline, but there were always detractors, the restless, the too-ambitious.  Before, long before, there’d been the serving women with plots, the maids who would fish for information for their mistresses, trying to trap themselves a royal husband.  Merlin would defend Arthur and their destiny to his dying breath, now, and before, before he had loved Arthur as a friend and then a brother and then as something more, well — then he wouldn’t have wanted to give anybody else the satisfaction of killing the prat when it was so obviously Merlin’s right.

Arthur favored Merlin with a look that was a cross between exasperated and fond.

“There is something about you, Merlin,” he said, voice soft, and older than the first time he’d said it.  It started something warm in the pit of Merlin’s belly that rolled outward like a wave licking the shore, stretching up his spine, and by the time Arthur drew him near with his free hand — Carys playfully gnawing on the fingers of his other — to kiss him, Merlin thought that whatever life had in store for them, whatever trials might come, that it would be worth it to have known Arthur Pendragon like this, to have held his regard and his affection, and for however long Arthur would allow it, his hand.

***

In fall, Uther died.  

It wasn’t a fading sickness that took him, nor an enemy’s sword.  He simply collapsed one day before his council, discussing tariffs for the coming year of trading, about how many barrels of ale and how many pounds of candles were needed for the long cold winter ahead.  Gaius said it was a sudden seizure of the heart, and for the long mourning afterward, Merlin found himself in Arthur’s bed more often than not, fingers clutched at Arthur’s tunic, his ear pressed over Arthur’s heart, feeling his breath catch at every other beat — strong, alive.

Arthur was crowned in haste, wearing his kingship with a heartsick weariness that vanished beneath a smile of unyielding strength as visiting royals poured into Camelot’s gates — to congratulate Arthur, to mourn Uther, to test what of Camelot now, to find any weakness to the kingdom.  

Merlin was more vigilant and less discrete, and when he let Carys out of Arthur’s chambers to stretch her wings, he stood at the highest tower of the castle and stretched out his fingers.  He felt the wind and the sky and the hugeness of the Earth underneath the foundations, the rushing power of water and the cold cruelty of the fast-coming winter and let it burn in his veins, casting glittering gold charms over the kingdom, protective charms so old he cast them in pictograms on the castle walls — the words so ancient the sounds were lost.

Carys seemed to recognize it, whatever old magic was holding Camelot in its thrall now, and she glided through the inky night with sighs of delight for long hours, the leathery sounds of her wings cutting into Merlin’s brooding.  And for all Merlin had cursed her as a baby and loathed her as a toddler and scolded her for how she treated Arthur as an indestructible playmate, she was shockingly docile at Arthur’s side in the early mornings, laying her head across his lap and looking at him imploringly, solemn in her sadness for his grief.

Uther had been a great king, once, and perhaps always a poor father, but that proved cold comfort in the face of his sudden absence.

“I always knew it would come to this,” Arthur said the day they entombed his father, sealed him beneath the castle with so much dust and history.  There were shadows underneath his eyes, bruised smudges, and for all the laughter and bravado during the light, during the day-long feasts and celebrations held to celebrate his coronation, here he was quiet and young again.  “I don’t know why I’m so upset.”

Carys murmured something in the atonal hum she’d taken on of late, curled up at the foot of their bed, and Merlin just smoothed his hands down the line of Arthur’s back — dear — and said, “He was your father as well as the king, Arthur,” because it was true, and it was tragic, and it was all he could say.

***

Winter was sleepy and deep, and in January, Carys woke Merlin when she tore out of Arthur’s chambers, her voice a high, angry shriek as she soared over all of Camelot, breaking each and every one of the rules.

Carys — for her insubordination and tendency toward violence — was never stupid, and Merlin spared only a second to curse and jerk out of bed, his heart thrashing in his chest.  The only other time she’d acted so, Arthur had told him, was when the assassin had crept into the castle, clutching a poisoned blade for Camelot’s then-Prince.

It was pure and poorly disguised magic that sent his horse — Arthur’s horse, and Merlin tried not to think of what it meant that no one in the royal stables thought to even comment when he flew in, barely dressed, and grabbed one of the king’s steeds — hurtling after Carys.  He tracked her mostly with magic, too, and the ground and forests and lakes and fields of Camelot blurred round him as he followed her screams toward the far eastern edges of the territory, and still it felt an entire age before he emerged out of a forest to see her —

Her wings, fully-extended, were shockingly wide, and hovering over Arthur — soaked in blood, clearly flagging, his hair matted to his face — she was breathing outward, flames in an arc, as another half-dozen men with swords, already dull, froze, astonished.

Merlin learned, much later, that Arthur and his guard had been attacked by a small phalanx sent by a neighboring kingdom. Arthur would tell Merlin, running hot water down his back and through his hair — washing away the ash and blood and dirt — that he and his newly-knighted guard were ambushed, deep inside Camelot’s territory, that when Merlin had arrived, he hadn’t needed any help, thanks, but that he would never be so foolish as to turn it down.

Arthur would say, “Merlin, stop shaking,” and put him to bed, and they wouldn’t speak of how, more terrifying than King Arthur’s dragon had been King Arthur’s &lt;i&gt;wizard&lt;/i&gt;, and how he’d poured light and fire and death from his fingertips and eyes and that it was only Arthur, finally, who’d stopped the slaughter and taken Merlin home.

“I’m dangerous,” Merlin gasped, as dawn crept over Camelot, when the rumors and story of the day before must have already torn through the entire land, of Arthur and his pet sorcerer.  “What if I —?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Arthur interrupted him, his voice steady and unafraid.  “You are my idiot manservant, as always.”  There was a long pause, and Arthur put his hand — rough, warm — over Merlin’s heart, pressing closer to him on their bed, and like a promise, he said, “And I will never, never be frightened of you, Merlin.”

Carys, for once, had been convinced to stay in the antechamber, and Merlin was grateful for it as he drew in a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob, clutching desperately at Arthur, at his tunic, his arms, thinking that of all the sacrifices and heartaches and things that had been lost, it was Arthur he could never be without.

***  
   
Arthur repealed the ban on magic the first day of spring, when the sun was streaming down like a blessing and all of Camelot poured out into the courtyard of the castle, gazing up at him with starry-eyed amazement.  Merlin swore, later, he hadn’t mischievously whispered any spells or enchantments, but still all the village girls and some of the boys swooned over how Arthur had shined, his crown a gleaming note against his royalty, the deep red of his cloak, the courage of his smile.  

“My council tells me the masses have fallen in love with me,” Arthur passed on to Merlin that night, sitting close to him on the battlements of the castle, watching Carys chase fireflies and terrify the guard below.  

Merlin nodded.  “It’s true — but it cannot be helped.  Many of them are now thick in the head after that fever from three winters ago.”

Arthur scowled at him.  “Now that I think of it, I think maybe I should find someone prettier, younger to warm my bed at night.”

“Obviously, I will have Carys eat anybody who tries,” Merlin told him cheerfully.

“She likes me better,” Arthur argued.

“She loves you dearly,” Merlin allowed.  

That was obvious from the way she had expressly ignored the chat they’d had — or rather, the lecture Merlin had given her and she’d huffed steam at him over — about how she was never, never to allow Arthur to climb her and ride her like a giant, flying, fire-breathing death trap.  

Leaning heavily against Arthur’s side, Merlin added, “But you forget I am the only person she’d tolerate sharing you with.”

Arthur sighed, put upon.  “A ruler must bear many trials,” he intoned, but suffered to collect Merlin’s hand into his own and lace their fingers together.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Fostered by rageprufrock](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2540789) by [RedQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedQueen/pseuds/RedQueen)
  * [[Podfic] Fostered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3554651) by [dodificus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodificus/pseuds/dodificus)




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